The present invention generally relates to the field of multi-media virtual tours. More specifically, the present invention relates to internet-based multi-media virtual tours in the real estate industry.
Conventional virtual tour systems do not include the ability to switch between one category of information and another category of information with only one mouse or pointer click while being able to simultaneously view a slideshow of still photographs, panoramic images, or streaming video in a different pane.
With conventional systems, users are forced to laboriously navigate through a large quantity of material by scrolling down web pages, opening new windows or pop-up windows and waiting for web pages to load or reload.
Real estate buyers increasingly demand faster delivery of more information and higher quality information in an easy-to-use and easy-to-access format. However, using conventional virtual tour systems, users often experience disorientation. That is, a user loses a sense of knowing where they are virtually standing whenever they view an individual image, a floor plan, or any part of an entire virtual tour. Also, it is often necessary to drill several layers into conventional virtual tour systems in order to access desired information on a given listing.
Real estate buyers have also increased their demand for the different types of information related to listings. Beyond basic facts, descriptive text, property disclosures and flyers, buyers increasingly demand video footage, panoramic photography, 3D visualizations, music, audio narration and the like. Conventional systems are ill equipped to efficiently and effectively present these additional forms of information in an intelligible manner.
Current efforts by others at presenting this information to buyers suffer in that they are often limited to showing stills, panoramas and basic agent branding. Some other systems lack interactive plans and maps or lack the ability to simultaneously deliver a broad selection of additional information.
Thus, when viewing a still image of a room or a panoramic image, in the absence of a floor plan or map, it is very difficult for the user to deduce precisely whereabouts in the property the subject of the image is located, and less so, what is near to it. For example, when viewing an image of a kitchen, using conventional methods, it is difficult for the user to determine whether the kitchen is at the front or back of the house, or to know where the bedrooms are, in relation to the kitchen.
Interactive plans and maps, go some way toward solving this problem, however, interactive plans and maps alone, do not solve the entire problem, because the other half of the problem is to not sacrifice providing more detailed information about a property or agent/realtor and substantially maintaining all this information in a one screen format that is compatible with and utilizes the various screen resolutions used for displays.
Consequently conventional attempts to incorporate interactive floor plans in order to address the problem of orientation, have failed in one or more of the following three ways.
(A) Failure to show an interactive plan or map and images simultaneously. Many implementations require the plan to show in a different browser window, or require the plan to be hidden or obscured as soon as an image is invoked. If a user cannot see both plan and image at the same time, they quickly forget what their virtual position was, when they invoked the image.
(B) Failure to maximize the orientational value of a plan or map. Many implementations omit directionally positioned Symbols (e.g. camera icons) that indicate what is to be seen. In some implementations, the whole room is identified as a hot spot (when you mouse over the room it is highlighted in some way indicating it is clickable) or instead, a generic camera icon (e.g. a camera facing you the user) that has no directional indication is used as a hot-spot. Neither approach gives a clear indication of what is to be seen.
(C) Failure to provide access to other information from within the tour. That is, conventional methods fail to provide a flexible method to present and organize all types of highly desirable information that is required for an effective tour and marketing tool.
The present invention overcomes these and other problems by delivering a graphical user interface (GUI) or unified single-window viewing system for a comprehensive user-friendly Internet-based multi-media dual paned virtual tour presentation system having orientational capabilities.